“In the long run, we are all dead” – John Maynard
Keynes
Barack Obama, it is said by wise pundits, is
remarkable and praiseworthy for always taking the long view. I think his long
view, including normalizing the Trump transition, is disastrous and will
forever brand his presidency with the word “feckless.” I don’t think he gives a
feck about anything except his own legacy.
Yes, there have been achievements, mostly on the
economy and human/civil rights. Health care? He blew it by letting Republicans
he foolishly believed were human beings strangle Obamacare in the crib and then
claim it wasn’t working. In foreign affairs, I believe he made the Middle East
a lot worse than it should have been. He watched almost silently as Russia got
away with murder.
He did nothing, zero, to strengthen the Democratic
Party, which resulted in congressional, statehouse, and judicial takeovers by the
evil empire of Republicans. Despite popular support for himself, for Hillary
Clinton, and for most of the progressive agenda, Obama, like so many Democrats
before him, tossed away power in the false hope of compromise and national
unity with people who didn’t want it and laughed at him while he chased the
chimera.
Nothing epitomizes Obama’s political failure as much
as his analysis at his last press conference today of why Trump won. “I mean,
there are a whole bunch of folks who voted for the president-elect because they
feel forgotten and disenfranchised. They feel as if they’re being looked down
on. They feel as if their kids aren’t going to have the same opportunities as
they did.”
My, my, my!
Who forgot and disenfranchised them, Mr. President? Every single damnable Republican
since Nixon.
They seduced the ignorant, impoverished racists of
America by taking their votes for granted and stealing their lunch money in
exchange for beating down minorities. Obama, like so many Democrats before him,
was terrified of standing up for progressive principles, even as a majority the
people would have supported them. The “long view” Democrats have been afraid of
their own shadow since before Nixon, scared that they might be called names.
Of course, the Trump chumps are looked down upon, but
it isn’t Democrats who look down upon them. It is Republicans, and every single
economic and political analysis of any value has proven this time and time
again. It is the same playbook that Southern Democrats used. So it matters not what
the name of the party is. It is the lowbrow, self-hating, uneducated, racist,
cousin-marrying underbelly of America themselves who are inaugurating a
president who promises to lift them just one small rung above people of color.
Their kids will never have opportunity so long as they keep voting for political
swindlers.
This optimistic, positive, “long view” of America
doesn’t quite work when in the short view democracy and people die. It is truly
ironic that had Obama actually been a Democrat, he could have served out his
post-presidency on the Supreme Court, where he could have done some good. Now,
whatever Obama does as a private citizen will advance no progressive agenda;
only his own.
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